9

Setting Standard Snaps 11
Align to View—Orients a local axis of an object
or sub-object selection with the current viewport.
Options on the dialog are interactive, as they are
on the Normal Align dialog. See Al ign to View
(page 1–468).
Place H ighlight—Orients a face normal to a
light. See Place Highlight (page 1–467) and Lighting
in 3d s Max (page 2–1279).
S etting Sta ndar d Sna ps
Snapping to: en d poin ts, midpoints, edges
Standard snaps give you control in creating,
moving, rotating, and scaling objects. You access
the snap features in the program from buttons on
the m ain toolbar.
You make most snap settings on Grid And Snap
Settings, a modeless dialog with four panels. You
can move this dialog to any convenient location
on your screen and turn options on and off as you
work. Panels are reset to defaults for each new
session.
You can also make commonly used snap sett ings
on the Snaps toolbar (page 2–42).
Snap sett ings are stored in t he 3dsmax.ini (page
1–18) file rather than in the MAX file. This means
that the state of the snap settings persists from
session to session without your having to modify
the maxstart.max file.
Gr id And Snap S ettings Dialog and Sna ps
Tool bar
Themostcommonlyusedgridandobjectsnaps
appear on the Grid and Snap Settings dialog (page
2–41).Thisisthegeneralsequenceforusingthese
snaps:
1. Turn on snapping by clicking the Snaps
Togglebuttononthemaintoolbar,andthen
right-click this button to display the Grid And
Snap Settings dialog.
Two sets of snap types are available: Standard
(the default) and NURBS. Both are discussed in
Snap Settings (page 2–41).
You can also make commonly used snap
settings on the Snaps toolbar (page 2–42).
2. By default, only the Grid Points snap t ype is
active. Turnonothersnaptypestoactivate
them. When you create or move objects,
these snaps are now in effect anywhere in 3D
space, and u naffected by the current transform
coordinate system.
As you move the cursor, each snap type is
markedbyadistinctiveiconshownontheSnap
panel. The cur rent icon indicates the t ype and
position of the next snap .
Gridpointsandgridlinesaresecondarytothe
other snap types. For example, if both Grid
Point and Vertex are active, the software snaps
to a vertex in preference to an equally close grid
point.
3. Tur n snaps on and off as needed; the easiest
way is by pressing the
S key.
For more information on snaps, see 2D Snap, 2.5D
Snap, 3D Snap (page 2–35) and Snap Settings (page
2–41).